A WRITER'S WITIf you donate to a charity and save a few kids, 20 years down the line, there will be more people who exist because of you. In other words, you should consider your actions fully.​Diana GabaldonBorn January 11, 1952

D. Gabaldon

My Book World

Many celebrity memoirs or autobiographies seem to read as if the author has recorded his or her story and transcribed it word for word—with little benefit of revision or constructive editing. Not so with Sally Field. The arc of her narrative advances from one point of tension to the next until the climax splatters on the page like a scene from one of her films. In making herself vulnerable to all the revealed truths of her life, she encourages readers to acknowledge their own truths, and because of this honesty readers are willing to forgive her her foibles. Even if Field does not possess a degree from an accredited institution (a lifetime regret on her part), she creates prose that stands up to that of any fine writer. Moreover, she does a superb job of connecting the emotional DNA from great-grandmother to grandmother to mother to Sally. She quotes from Jung as her touchstone:

“‘Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent’” (29)

​That both her mother and stepfather are failed actors (in the sense that they cannot sustain lifelong careers) contributes to how they relate to Sally as the child. The public may be tempted to believe that because one is offered a TV series at age eighteen said actor has it made for the rest of her life. Not so. Field makes plain how actors for many years may live from hand to mouth—without health insurance, without home ownership, sometimes without food for themselves or families. Not only do Sally’s parents experience these pitfalls, but so does she. As the star of Gidget, she is suddenly supporting her parents and siblings, because both her parents are at low points their own careers. And the path never gets easier. One might be paid quite well for one film but then the next project is not in sight, and an actor must stretch that income until something does come along. Moreover, Field has her own children and spouse to support, at times repeating the pattern of living she has grown up with.

But the story of Field’s acting career is only one strand of her memoir. She shares the most intimate parts of her life which help to illuminate who she is as an actor. I am reminded of her titular role in Norma Rae, when she stomps up onto a table and unites laborers where she works, and it is not difficult to believe that Field gains her power from a very real scene transpiring with her stepfather, one of the most dramatic scenes from the book. Sally is fifteen, both her mother and stepfather, Jocko, are drunk, and he picks a fight with Sally, informing her she’s a smart-ass, that he knows her inside and out, and she denies that he knows anything about her:

“The room turned red, bright blazing red. I rose from where I sat perched on the edge of my childhood, rose up through years of fear, fury, and longing, of confusion and love. I stepped onto the coffee table and there we were again, eye-to-eye, nose-to nose.

‘I hate you! YOU’RE the liar! Not ME! And you know NOTHING!’ From my mouth came a voice, but it didn’t belong to me, and from a faraway place I watched as this little person who looked like me stood up until she seemed to tower over this man.

‘You don’t know who I am!” This guttural voice, filled with loathing, vomited forth as she peered into his eyes. But it wasme. I was still there, somewhere. And while she stood, I held my breath—for a minute? An hour? And a stunning realization hit me: He was frightened of her. He was frightened of me” (90).

Jocko throws Field repeatedly against a glass patio door, but even so she realizes she has won. “Somehow, some part of me that wasn’t afraid, that didn’t care if I was loved, or if I lived or died, had beaten him. He knew it too” (91)

Wow. That page and a half stuns me. I suddenly see, perhaps, (for who knows where it emanates from) the power Field draws from to act, to create the memorable characters that she has for decades—the place inside her where she must retreat again and again, mining emotional truth to create honest and vibrant characters. As I said, Wow. Field’s memoir continues at this pace until the very end, in which she reaches resolution about a very key event from her childhood, one through which the reader can view Sally Field as a whole, integrated person, one who has more than earned what one might call happiness.